We are through the strong wind belt and into glorious sunshine and a bright sparkling sea. SHIMSHAL took the heavier winds of last night in her stride and sailed her way through, sometimes under staysail alone. She shrugged off the thumping from the waves and kept us all warm, dry and, incredibly, un-seasick!
We have to be in port by tomorrow night as this evening we are about to scoff the last of the 'passage' meals that Sally diligently prepared in port and then froze. The smells of garlic bread and lasagne are wafting up from the galley. Outside the sparkling seas are losing their white crests and flattening out. There's not a cloud in the sky.
We will soon be back in iceberg territory but we have excellent visibility and calming seas. The concern is for the night as, now that we are at 57N, we will get a few hours of real darkness. We have checked the batteries in the spotlights and image intensifier. We will set the radar to alarm if a hard lump of anything is ahead. And we will be keeping our eyes wide open as night comes.
It's exciting to be within a days sail of the New World having come the way the Vikings came. Our journeys thus far on SHIMSHAL have taken us from Sweden to Norway, Denmark, Scotland, Wales, the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. In a few days time we will be completing our own 'Viking journey' and stepping ashore where Erik the Red first set foot in Newfoundland a millennium ago.